


the heart i gave to you (i cannot find)

by electrumqueen



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-02
Updated: 2010-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gale, after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the heart i gave to you (i cannot find)

**Author's Note:**

> **the heart i gave to you (i cannot find)**  
> gale (gale/katniss, katniss/peeta).   
> spoilers for _mockingjay_; otherwise no real warnings. pg.  
> _gale, after the war._

She says, "We get your show. I watched it once or twice."

He says, "Thanks for watching."

It is painfully polite. This is never how they were, once upon a time.

\--

Posy goes back to what used to be District Twelve. Gale feels like he should take her, go with her, do something; but she can't even meet his eyes, anyway.

No one he used to know can meet his eyes, not even when he's dreaming about them.

He is sometimes jealous of Katniss. She got to go home again.

\--

He dreams about the bombs, _his_ bombs, sometimes. A lot of the time, if he is being honest, which he isn't.

He dreams about Primrose Everdeen going up in flames, bright and beautiful but without her sister's protections; Prim was never the girl on fire until she was dead.

He wonders if his subconscious is making it worse than it was; in his dreams her eyes boil and snap and pop and her skin burns red then black and she is screaming, screaming, screaming. He can never know; he wasn't there.

He loved Primrose Everdeen and he loved Prim's sister and now he can have neither of them.

That is how the world works, isn't it.

To win the war they needed Gale; to win the war Gale lost himself, lost the girl, lost the world, lost _his_ world. But not the war. The war he won.

He's not going to say it wasn't worth it; it was. He's just saying, sometimes (all the time) it hurts.

\--

Posy sometimes writes him letters, sends him pictures of her house and the geese that flock through the village. Once there is a sketch of Katniss, sitting on a rock with her hair falling over her shoulder. (Not their rock; just a little rock by the front of the school.)

It is not this that gets him, strangely; it is a folded picture of a field filled with flowers.

He stares at it for a long time, finds himself crying. He's never been a crier; maybe now he can afford it.

\--

He works on a politics show. They talk about the emerging government; mostly in helpful terms, because he knows a lot of people in it and they are good people who offered him any job he wanted.

He said no, of course; he can't have any responsibility, anymore. The idea of it sickens him.

His co-commentators talk about Katniss Everdeen sometimes, the mockingjay, the girl who was on fire. They're building a statue of her by the new Justice Building, which he thinks is kind of a waste of resources.

He never says her name.

\--

He thinks about her all the time. He shouldn't; he should move on, as she has moved on, but she has stuck in his mind, in his heart: a symbol of everything he ever did wrong. (She wouldn't want this, he knows; she always hated being anyone's symbol of anything.)

He thinks about writing her a letter, saying, _I wish we could talk to each other,_ but he knows they can't.

(He writes to Peeta, instead. Just short, inane conversation; _the weather is fantastic here, what about there; I just got a cat._ Peeta skirts around writing _Katniss_ and Gale is glad; Peeta was always kind.

From these snippets of Peeta's life Gale builds his own version of Katniss; she is happy, now. And strong and healthy and she loves Peeta, plays with the cat and picks flowers and hunts.

For some reason it only makes him stronger to think of Katniss in the woods with her bow; this is something he did not spoil, did not break.)

He sometimes thinks he broke her heart, and that hurts even though she broke his. Peeta will have picked up the pieces, anyway.

Sometimes he wonders if he could have done something different, something kinder, something better; if she would still love him if he had never built a bomb, refused to go on a raid.

This is useless thinking but late at night it seems like the only thing that's worth examining, each decision from a hundred different angles.

Some of them end with her kissing him; it doesn't matter, either way, because he chose what he chose, and he'd do it again a million times.

\--

Posy becomes a teacher. He goes to see her, once, to meet the children she's teaching.

He walks past Katniss on the street and of course he recognises her: she is burned onto his heart like the fire in her dress.

She stops. Her hair is falling into her eyes. Her mouth starts to form his name.

He remembers kissing her, remembers loving her; he thinks, _Catnip_ with nothing but longing; closes his eyes and walks away.

\--

There is a party. He is wearing a suit.

She is wearing pants and a long shirt. She is still beautiful, though her eyes are incredibly incredibly sad and he put that there, he killed Prim which was surely the last straw. He should feel worse about a thousand things but it is this that finally cut through all the layers of his heart to _hurt_.

Peeta smiles at Gale; his hand is on her elbow. "I'm going to get a drink," he says. "I'll be right back."

She leans into him, imperceptible except that Gale is looking. "Okay," she says and reluctantly lets him go.

He remembers being young with her. It seems idyllic now, even though it wasn't. It was two of them, against the world.

Prim stands between them, a tiny beautiful ghost. Neither of them close the space where she is.

They talk for a moment, awkward, and then Peeta comes back and they leave.

Say what you want about Gale and Katniss, but they have always understood each other.

\--

Every time they talk about her, he wonders if this time he will say her name.

He never knows until it is in his mouth, as the tip of his teeth, pressing at the inside of his lips; he always swallows it back and looks straight into the lens and says, _she._

If he is being truthful (he isn't), he'd acknowledge that some part of him, deep inside, thinks he can summon her by saying her name. And she is happy now, he thinks, he hopes. She is a woman in a field and she does not need to come here, to this place of steel and skyscrapers and all the things she fought to destroy.

This does not stop him wondering, sometimes, if she is watching.


End file.
